Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky

Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky (January 23, 1897 – January 18, 2000) was the first female Austrian architect, best remembered today for designing the 'Frankfurt Kitchen'. During World War II she was active in the Nazi resistance movement.

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Early career

Schütte-Lihotzky represented the Neuen Bauens, New Constructions. Between the World Wars, she planned and built the New Frankfurt for the Wein Siedlerbewegung, or Vienna Building Society. Significantly, she had already completely planned and designed cities new from ground up. Magnitogorsk, still a major industrial center in the Soviet Union's Ural region of Siberia, was one of them. She also designed kindergarten pavilions using Maria Montessori's ideas. (Montessori was the first woman in Italy to qualify as a physician and founder of the Montessori Method of education.) In each of these settings, Schütte-Lihotzky can be credited as being the first to introduce the women's perspective into architectural design. Schütte-Lihotzky was among the foremost social architects practicing in Europe before World War II. She specialized in designing housing for the working class. Her designs reduced the labor involved in “house labor” of working wives. Her kitchens became the prototype for those in any modern home or apartment worldwide. Just as significantly, in terms of Turkey's new ideology, she had designed motion-saving kitchens for the home, which she based on Frederick W. Taylor's time efficiency studies and the motion-efficiency studies of Frank and Lillian Gilbreth. “Schütte-Lihotzky designed the famed Frankfurt kitchen which was functional, inexpensive, and could be mass-produced. Beginning in 1927, the Frankfurt City Council installed 10,000 of her prefabricated kitchens in working-class apartments. Before her innovative design, kitchens were mostly planned for households with servants.” She learned about the Taylor system, a scientific approach to understanding the necessity of accurately measuring the time required for each task performed in a given job in order to better organize work and redesign the workplace in order to increase efficiency. During the 1920s, Taylorism was transforming the industrial workplace in the United States. According to architectural writer Billie Ann Lopez, around 1922, Schütte-Lihotzky “read an essay called “How Can Appropriate Housing Construction Reduce the Work of Housewives” in the Breslau journal The Silesian Home. Schütte-Lihotzky immediately understood that by connecting design to function in the kitchen, there would be a positive impact for the working woman, providing her with more time for her family and for herself.” [2] Using a stopwatch, Schütte-Lihotzky timed each task required within the kitchen for preparing a meal to the cleaning up afterward. She then proceeded to design her trend-setting kitchen, one that became famous worldwide.

<insert image > According to Schütte-Lihotzky, badly located kitchen cabinetry on the left and design with efficiently located cabinetry on the right.

<insert image> Schütte-Lihotzky’s Frankfurt Kitchen: Plan and elevations.

<insert image > Schütte-Lihotzky’s Frankfurt Kitchen: Isometric.

Schütte-Lihotzky also designed kindergarten pavilions using Maria Montessori's ideas. (Montessori was the first woman in Italy to qualify as a physician and founder of the Montessori Method of education.) In each of these settings, Schütte-Lihotzky can be credited as being the first to introduce the women's perspective into architectural design.

Schütte-Lihotzky in Turkey

Among the many professors and/or professionals invited to Turkey starting 1933 was a group of leading architects. In 1938, together with her architect husband, Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky was called to Istanbul to teach at the Academy of Fine Arts, and to reunite with exiled German architect Bruno Taut. Schütte-Lihotzky was brought in because she epitomized several of the goals and objectives of the Republic’s fathers. That she was a female was of significance and an important signal sent by the Young Turks in government, who were mostly career army officers. Arguably, the role model she provided can be credited for the fact that currently more than a third of practicing architects in Turkey are women! [3]

<insert image> Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky.

Schütte-Lihotzky returned to fight the Nazis

Herbert Eichholzer, an Austrian architect was Schütte-Lihotzky’s colleague in Istanbul. While performing his contractual duties for Ankara’s government, he was also busy organizing Communist anti Nazi resistance at home. In 1939, Schütte-Lihotzky joined the Austrian Communist Party (KPÖ). In December 1940, she and Eichholzer returned to Vienna to secretly contact and aid the Austrian Communist resistance movement. She was arrested by the Gestapo on 22 January 1941 managed to survive the war and continued to practice architecture. Herbert Eicholzer was also arrested in 1941, but he was executed by the Gestapoin 1943. [4]

Return to Vienna

In 1946, Schütte-Lihotzky returned to Vienna, but during the Cold War, her Communist Party membership stood in the way of her winning many architectural assignments. In 1980, she received the City of Vienna Architecture Award for her lifetime contributions, and, in 1988, she was offered the Austrian Medal of Science and Art but declined it because of the alleged Nazi affiliations of Kurt Waldheim, Austria's president at the time. She celebrated her 100th birthday in 1997, dancing a short waltz with Vienna’s mayor and remarking, “I would have enjoyed it, for a change, to design a house for a rich man.” In her memoirs, Schütte-Lihotzky tells about the years she spent in the “Resistance,” her fellow prisoners and fellow fighters, and their efforts and courage in an uncompromising solidarity which actually saved her life. Schütte-Lihotzky’s legacy can be found in each and every Turkish, European, and American kitchen, be it in a modest apartment building flat or in a large villa. When preparing the meal or washing and putting away the dishes, one needs not to walk more than two or at most three steps front to back or side to side.

Notes

This article is based on Reisman, A. Turkey's Modernization: Refugees from Nazism and Atatürk's Vision (Washington, DC: New Academia Publishers. 2006.) http://www.newacademia.com/turkeys_modernization/

Lopez, B. A. “Mother of the Modern Built-in Kitchen: Margarete (Grete) Schütte-Lihotzky” http://www.virtualvienna.net/columns/billie/margaretesl.html. Viewed May 27, 2007

The Chamber of Architects of Turkey, Personal communication July 26, 2006.

Schütte-Lihotzky, M.(1999). Erinnerungen aus dem Widerstand (Memories from the Time of the Resistance) http://www.museumonline.at/1999/schools/classic/istanbul/lihotzky_e.htm Viewed May 20, 2006